May Day 2024
International Day of Working Class Unity and Struggle
Red Salute to the Fighting Workers and Oppressed Peoples of All Lands!
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS
On this May Day 2024, the
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) sends revolutionary
greetings to workers across Canada and Quebec, as well as in the
United States, Mexico and to our fraternal comrades and workers
in all countries. We especially greet the Palestinian people
fighting for their lives and right to be in the face of the
brutal acts of U.S./Israeli genocide they suffer every minute of
every day. We support the students, faculty and activists
fighting on campuses across the United States and also on
campuses in Canada and Quebec. In the U.S. in particular, they
are defying the Biden administration's all out assault on public
opinion via its brutal attack on liberal education and
institutions which uphold civil rights, especially the right to
conscience, assembly and speech.
We vehemently oppose attempts by the U.S., appeased by Canada and other countries, to connive with the government of Israel to put a humanitarian face on the imminent invasion of Rafah and forced evacuation of the Palestinian people from their homeland. We call on the workers, women, youth and students across the country to double and triple their support for the Palestinian resistance and right of return. Ceasefire Now! End the Occupation, Now! Release All Palestinian Political Prisoners and Dismantle All Settlements! Canada Must Stop Arming and Financing Israel! University Administrations Must Stop Criminalizing Supporters of the Palestinian People and Opponents of Israeli Zionism!
So too on May Day, let us pledge to put our full weight behind the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Europe, Oceania, and the United States fighting against imperialist enslavement at home and abroad and wars of destruction carried out first and foremost by the U.S. in its striving for global hegemony with the support of NATO members under its control. Horrendous crimes are being committed in the name of human rights, opposition to extremism, terrorism and autocracy to justify attacks on the rights of minorities, women, youth and migrants. Never has it been so clear that the security and future of working people everywhere lies in their own fight for the rights of all.
Everywhere, working people are fighting for what belongs to them by right. They are writing new chapters in the history of the peoples' striving to exercise control over the decisions that affect their lives. Progress in the struggle is thanks to all those who set their own agenda and build the organizations required to be effective and achieve results. Progress in this fight ensures that the all-sided crisis in which the world is mired is not resolved on the backs of the workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, in favour of the rich or by embroiling workers and youth in wars of aggression, occupation and destruction.
The struggle of workers to realize the
claims they are entitled to make on society provides rights with
a modern meaning, beyond the limitation of constitutions which
only recognize rights as privileges, available to some and not
all. Unfolding events reveal how the rulers in the United
States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and other
countries are desperate to prolong the lives of states which
have been taken over by narrow private interests. Laws are
manipulated so that rights are presented as something that can
be given and taken away based on these private interests in
control. Rights belong to people by virtue of being human. They
are affirmed by activating the human factor/social consciousness
in the course of humanizing the natural and social environment
and fighting for peace, freedom and democracy.
The ruling elite who serve narrow private interests claim the denial of rights is done in the national interest and for national security. By doing so, these elites deny the necessity for a modern nation-building project led by the working class which must constitute itself the nation and vest sovereignty in the people. Denying rights and integrating Canada into the U.S. war machine, the neo-liberal agenda is not national or nation-building but nation-wrecking.
Reflecting on the struggles waged over the past year confirms that only when the working class and their allies position themselves to control the decisions affecting their lives can they put an end to being at the mercy of those who currently hold economic and political power. These struggles to take hold of their lives open prospects for themselves, their families, communities and the country itself.
Considering the present national and international situation, it has become clear that the capitalist class in power in Canada and in most of the world has no solution to any of the social and natural problems facing the people, their societies and humanity. They are committing unprecedented crimes as in Gaza and all over the world. These problems demand immediate solutions. For this to happen, the working class must take matters into its own hands and speak and act in its own name. CPC(M-L) calls on workers, women and youth to become worker politicians who are not beholden to the cartel parties and their mafia governments, which keep the people at the mercy of the rich and their narrow private interests.
Across Canada after three decades of nation-wrecking through implementing the neo-liberal anti-social agenda, the representational forms of government lie in tatters. The self-serving character of the decisions taken by governments said to be representative cannot be disguised as something positive. People need a mass democracy where they can participate in arriving at decisions at every level and take direct responsibility for their implementation without having their voice, thinking and actions usurped by so-called representatives, especially those who pledge allegiance to a foreign King.
The dangerous international situation demands the establishment of an anti-war government that makes Canada a zone for peace in the world. This begins by taking Canada out of NATO and NORAD and transforming parliament so that it becomes a truly democratic decision-making body, where mass democratic forms enabling the people to participate in decision making at every level are developed.
A worthy government must set the aim of the economy to serve the needs of the people, not the war profiteers and other narrow private interests. It must take all-sided measures to make sure trading and all international relations are based on mutual benefit and development and that exploitative arrangements are abolished. Resolving problems among nations without the use of force is needed.
Such a government would provide status for all workers, migrants and refugees making sure no one is illegal. On this occasion we salute all those fighting for the rights of migrant, guest and oppressed immigrant workers as well as warehouse and gig workers, and international students.
Importantly, Canadians require the immediate restoration of the hereditary rights of the Indigenous Peoples and payment of reparations for crimes past and ongoing.
Our security truly lies in the fight for the rights of all. Fighting for an anti-war government is an aim that unifies the fighting forces and opens a path for a modern form of government that empowers the people.
The demand for social programs to meet the needs of the people is a central immediate aim. This includes the right to housing for all, properly funded transportation and communications systems throughout this vast country, educational and health care institutions, senior's care and day care serving all equally. Modern democratic institutions as defined by the people not the rich are needed that serve all and meet the requirements of a modern society.
Success in these endeavours can be achieved when workers position themselves to play their role as individuals and collectives in defence of the rights and claims of all.
The warmongering, lies, disinformation, identity politics, scandals and defamations designed to keep the people divided and ineffective lead to war spending, handouts to the rich and special powers to deny rights and the voice of the people. They form part of the anti-people agenda that must be rejected.
We salute the workers organized in unions who are speaking out and all those who are coming forward to discuss and take serious stands about what they need and how things should be organized. In this regard, a red salute goes to the youth who are fighting for the rights of the Palestinian people, rights at work, and to humanize the natural and social environment and raise the slogan, Not a Single Youth for Imperialist War!
Canadian and Quebec workers have never accepted the servile condition of having no say over their living and working conditions. They have not accepted this in the past and will not accept it in the future. They do not agree to people being left to fend for themselves within a modern condition of being born to society and a socialized economy. They do not agree with or accept economic and political subservience to narrow private interests of a ruling elite and U.S. dictate and hegemony. They do not accept the assertion of the financial oligarchs that Canada cannot have a self-reliant economy with friendly relations with all nations.
At this time, the conditions call on the working class to take up its historic role to lead all working people in action to fight for their rights in a manner that upholds the rights of all. The working people must bring a new world order into being where the condition for the peace and prosperity of any nation or people is the peace and prosperity of all nations and peoples.
CPC(M-L) calls on its organizations across the country to make sure workers' forums are held which bring out what is pertinent and decisive in today's struggles. Speaking out, taking decisions and acting together develop the confidence and perspective required to open a path forward that humanizes the social and natural environment and requires governments to stop funding war, stop paying the rich and increase funding for social programs.
On the Occasion of May Day 2024, Red Salute to
the Fighting Workers and Oppressed Peoples of All Lands!
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 30 - May 1, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54301.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca